As the election battle hots up, BJP campaigners are putting all their weight behind what is being perceived as L.K. Advani’s last prime ministerial bid.

The Sunday Express spoke to the young volunteers in BJP’s New Delhi war room, spent a day with Advani’s family in Ahmedabad and accompanied the leader and his Man Friday, Deepak Chopra, on his Bihar campaign

Photographs by NEERAJ PRIYADARSHI

Devyani Onial

New Delhi

At 26, Tughlaq Crescent, in Lutyens’ Delhi, the only sound is of the cuckoo heralding the arrival of summer and inside, the hum of the air conditioning. This is as far as you can get from the heat and noise of election campaigning but this is the centre that holds the BJP’s publicity campaign.

The war room was set up last April, gained momentum this January and now in the midst of the elections, is throwing all its energy into the fight. The team is hard at work on an employment vision document that will be released in Gujarat next week. Advani’s confidant and former journalist Sudheendra Kulkarni runs through ideas with the volunteers. Somebody suggests looking into how so few people in India find jobs through employment exchanges while another inquires about the design of the document. Team volunteers range from MBA graduates on their summer internships to a real estate professional to a journalist from New Zealand who sees little irony in supporting the Labour Party there and a right wing party here.

The volunteers work out of BJP leader Ananth Kumar’s house and now also from another, more spacious office at former party president Venkaiah Naidu’s house close by. Young people sit hunched over computers and words like Orkut, scraps and mailers dominate conversations. The day begins at about 8.30 a.m. and like most workplaces ends at no definite hour. “I was pleasantly surprised to see the office. I hadn’t really expected it to be this. It’s very cordial and professional, just like any corporate set-up,” says Harsh Vardhan Chhaparia, 25, an IIM-Calcutta graduate who will join a market research firm in July. Chhaparia, who got to speak with Advani over the phone on his fourth attempt—much to his disbelief—and got an audience with him in Delhi, joined the team in mid-March and like most other out-of-city volunteers, is staying at an MP’s house and eating all his meals at work.

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